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46. Orientalia

Chosen by:
Dr Aline Scott-Maxwell,
Honorary Research Fellow, School of Music
Senior Asian Studies Librarian

Asche, Oscar,1871-1936.

Norton, Frederic, 1869-1946.

Courtney, Vince.

Halstead, Henry.

The ‘Orient’ in Australian Popular Stage Entertainment and Music.

Fascination with—as well as fear of—the ‘Orient’ has been a continuous thread throughout Australia’s cultural history. From the mid-19th to the early 20th century, especially, the prevalence of exoticised oriental themes and representations in popular theatre and music produced or consumed in Australia testified to this fascination, as seen in the examples on display. This material forms part of a larger-scale Orientalist phenomenon that had particular resonances for geographically isolated Australia, with its relatively close proximity to Asia and its colonial-era ‘Chinese problem’.

The souvenir program for the musical comedy, Chu Chin Chow—billed as ‘a musical extravaganza of the Orient’—is for the 1920-21 Melbourne production at the Tivoli Theatre.  Chu Chin Chow was written and produced by expatriate Australian actor, Oscar Asche. It originally opened in London on 31 August 1916, well into World War One, and it ran for an unprecedented five years, with 2235 individual performances.

The plot is based around the tale of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves but has the main protagonist (Abu Hasan) disguised as a Chinese (Chu Chin Chow).  It therefore brings together the two principal ‘sites’ of Orientalist interest, so-called Araby and China, as can be seen from the imagery on the program cover. Photos inside the program of some of the female actors in their bizarrely fantastic and revealing costumes underlined the erotic appeal of the Orient. The music is by Frederic Norton and the songs range from I am Chu Chin Chow of China to the suggestive When a Pullet is Plump She’s Tender and the show’s hit song, Kissing Time.  Chu Chin Chow was so popular in Australia that it spawned a parody revue titled the Two Chinned Chow.

‘Oriental’ elements were also introduced into the hugely popular home-grown Australian pantomime of 1916, The Bunyip. Written by Ella Airlie and Nat Phillips (of Stiffy and Mo fame), it featured characters such as Princess Wattleblossom and the evil King of the Bush Gnomes, who changes the princess into the fearsome bunyip illustrated on the sheet music covers of published songs from the show. The music and lyrics for the exhibited example, My Chinee Girl, are by prolific Australian popular song-writer, Vince Courtenay, who played the part of the Chinese cook in the stage production. Courtenay also contributed an early example of Australian ragtime to the show, The Corroboree Rag.

A craze emerged in the early 1920s for so-called ‘oriental fox-trots’ and ‘oriental waltzes’. Some were locally-composed while others were the product of America’s Tin Pan Alley, often published by Australian music-houses under licence. The other exhibit, China Girl, is an example of this. Published by Albert & Son, Sydney, it was ‘plugged’ at the lavish Ambassadors cabaret by local artist, Phyllis Du Barry, who is depicted on the sheet music cover.  Her exotic headdress bears as little relation to Chinese culture as the music, which is replete with formulaic ‘oriental’ musical devices and clichés such as simple stilted rhythms and exaggerated five-tone scales.

This and the other items on display are part of an extensive collection of sheet music, theatre programs and other materials held in Rare Books that provide valuable insights into how Australians perceived and represented ‘the Orient’ as well as into the popular music and entertainment industry of the period.

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